


A Children's Anthology of Magical Beasts by Daphne Scamander

by Rainbow_Words



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Book: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Chamber of Secrets, Death, Fluff and Angst, How Do I Tag, Implied Sexual Content, LGBTQ Themes, Love Potion/Spell, Maybe - Freeform, Multi, Newt X Tina, Newt as Dad, Newt is a Dork, Newt's children, OC, Post-Movie 1: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rating May Change, World War I, World War II, affair, newtina
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:39:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9506384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_Words/pseuds/Rainbow_Words
Summary: "With the help of this glorified notebook, I am going to:a) discover an actually useful talent and use it to form a successful careerb) Find out what on earth is wrong with Jacobyc) Fix everything. "Daphne Scamander does not share her Father's affinity with Magical Creatures. In fact, they hate her. Labelled Newt's biggest disappointment, Daphne is determined to show the world she is not an idiot. But this is easier said then done when you're the only Scamander in 150 years that has no talent whatsoever. With the war blaring onwards and with the sudden reappearance of Leta LeStrange, will Daphne be able to save her already dysfunctional family?





	1. Chapter One

Daphne's Diary

28th August 1941,

Midnight,

London,

Second room on the left.

Hello, 

If you're reading this and you aren't the present or future me, I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify several things: one, you're an incredibly rude and nosy person who likes to read through teenage girls diaries, two, despite being Newt Scamander's youngest daughter, I am in no way noteworthy or appealing and it's probably in your best interests to put down this red, leather-bound diary with gold embossed letters spelling out 'Daphne Ariella Erinna Scamander' right away. Finally and thirdly, you should be aware, I do not share my father's affinity with animals, much to his disappointment. 

It's not like I haven't tried to earn their friendship. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in Dad's suitcase desperately trying to get the Snorkcap's to love me (which wasn't my smartest move, I know that now. Snorkcap's don't love anything but themselves) with nothing to show for it, bar an assortment of exotic burns and scratches. I'd like to be able to say I do not envy my siblings and the way nature just seems to adore them without them even having to do anything to gain their love, but then I would be lying and I promised Atticus I wouldn't do that anymore. When I was younger, Dad used to tell me that I had to be patient and the Beasts would come to trust me, with time, but I'm nearly fourteen years old now and still can't even keep a cactus alive. There was one time, I was about nine or ten, when the Daily Prophet wrote a ten-page article about "Newt Scamander's Biggest Disappointment!" 

Newsflash, it's me. 

I have only seen my Father angry once. It was strange to see his usually cheerful features contorted into a look of utter disgust, even stranger for it to be at my expense. I didn't hear what he said to the editor of The Daily Prophet, I'm not sure I want to, but within a day the paper was recalled and a different article printed in its place. We stopped reading the Daily Prophet after that and despite the slightly proud feeling I had that my Father was willing to take on the Daily Prophet for me, it still hurt because deep down I knew what the paper had written was true and Dad knew it too. I saw it in his eyes whenever I failed to get a hippogriff to bow to me when Pickett ran away from my outstretched hand in fear or maybe repulsion or just when I acted too much like me. I haven't told him this, how could I? Who wants to hear that their youngest daughter feels like an onion in a family of roses? I've told Lena though. 

"You're being an idiot, Daphne." She would say in her light, sing-song voice whenever I brought the subject up (which, to my shame was often) and, for a while at least, my spirits would lift 'cos Lena would never lie to me. Magdalena LeStrange, my older sister. She was different to the rest of us, in almost every way possible, but she fits into our family so seamlessly I can't imagine living without her. Lena is Dad's daughter, we think, with an old... acquaintance of Dad's named Leta LeStrange. Lena was left at my newly wedded parents' house when she was just two years old, with nothing but a note explaining her existence and the outgrown baby clothes she was wearing. She was quite beautiful, Magdalena, in a pure sort of way. She had frizzy brown hair with streaks of blonde running through it and our father's smiling almond shaped eyes and thin nose. This coupled with her height and elegance reminded me and almost all who met her of Rowena Ravenclaw, the founder of Lena's house. If my Father has a favorite, it most certainly is her and I don't blame him. There is not a person in this world who could ever hold a bad thought or grudge against Lena without feeling like a complete asshat. 

I can't help but wish I was Lena. She has everything I could ever wish for and doesn't even acknowledge it. 

But enough of jealous ramblings with no real justification and endpoint, let's get down to the real reason I am writing this pretentiousness. I am an exceedingly dull person, everyone says so, I want to change that. So with the help of this glorified notebook, I am going to:

a) discover an actually useful talent and use it to form a successful career

b) Find out what on earth is wrong with Jacoby 

c) Fix everything. 

If you're not me and you have read this far, I applaud you. You may be a nosy person but so am I and I invite on this hopefully exciting journey with me. 

Yours excitedly, 

Daphne Ariella Erinna Scamander.


	2. Chapter 2

30th August 1942

Half one (PM),

Inside the case,

Thestral enclosure

If you sneaking through my personal diary is going to be a regular occurrence, I should probably tell you at least a little about myself, starting with my more than a little dysfunctional family. There's six of us, in total. Lena, Jacoby, my younger brother Atticus and me, Daphne. My parents met in my mother's hometown of New York whilst my father was researching some sort of creature for his book whilst simultaneously trying to forget his fling with Lena's mother, unbeknownst of course that he had... caused (is that the right term?) my sister's existence. Following a series of incidents and adventures wherein my Father met his best friend, met his future wife and managed to defeat Gellert Grindlewarld, he returned to England promising my mother a copy of his book as he left. Within two years, they were married and were expecting their first biological child, my eldest brother, Jacoby (not knowing, of course that Lena was already two years old when Jacoby was born. They adopted Lena when she was five.)

Jacoby has always been... Different. Ever since he was a little boy I think we all sensed it. He'd also always been beautiful and his beauty only grew as he did. He was the spit of Dad, only with my Mam's dark, dark hair, but he couldn't be more different from him. Jacoby used to be the joker of the family, always full of tricks and laughter but that seems somehow phoney, now looking back, but at the time we thought nothing of it and instead focused on his clear talent for beating on a quidditch team, he seemed a shoe in for the Hufflepuff team.

Naturally, we all assumed that he would follow the Scamander tradition and be a Hufflepuff but then he went to Hogwarts and I guess we didn't know Jacoby as well as we thought we did because Jacoby didn't even come close to Hufflepuff. He was sorted into Slytherin. 

I wouldn't say that we were disappointed in him or anything, more shocked, but we supposed that it wouldn't change Jacoby, he would still be our brother and son. But it did change him. I can still remember the summer Jacoby came back from his first year at Hogwarts, he seemed different, awakened even, when we collected him and Lena from the station and almost the second we got home he ran up to his room, with only the vague excuse that he was tired. You could tell that my mother was disappointed, she'd already quizzed Lena on every tiny little detail about her school year and had been looking forward to asking Jacoby about his, however she sighed and said he'd probably be down for dinner. But he wasn't. He wasn't down for breakfast the next morning either. In fact, he didn't come downstairs at all that summer, no matter what was said or what threats were made. We'd see him, occasionally, making toast or tea and thinking about all the times Dad tried so hard to talk to him or get him to open up, breaks my heart. On the final night before he and Lena went back to school, Jacoby asked me and Lena to leave the room whilst he spoke to my parents. I don't know what was said that night, but there was a lot of shouting, a lot of noise and what sounded like crying, though who it came from neither Lena nor I could decipher. The next day, the day I boarded the train and left for Hogwarts for the first time, things were better than they'd been in a year and Jacoby even hugged my parents, if somewhat awkwardly, before he boarded the scarlet steam engine. As I said my final goodbyes to my parents and as the train chugged out of the station, the small flame of hope in my stomach that things could be good again died when I saw Jacoby's 'friends'. Lena had already hurried off to meet with her group of Ravenclaw buddies leaving us alone and defenceless to the gang slowly and leisurely drifting towards us. Despite the fact that they moved in a pack, it was clear to me who the leader was. Him. Tom Marvolo Riddle. 

The first time I saw him, I felt as if someone had taken all the air out of my lungs and replaced it with snakes. He wasn't the tallest in the group and was most certainly the handsomest out of the group, perhaps more attractive than Jacoby, but it was the eyes that scared me, pitch black. Without a shred of light in them at all. 

"Is this your little sister, Jacoby? "Tom asked. His voice was pleasant and conversational, but something about the way he asked that regular question made my skin crawl.

"She's just a kid, Tom." Jacoby whispered, all of his confidence and laughter I had previously associated with him, gone, like an extinguished flame. The boy stepped closer, his shark eyes not reflecting any of the strong September sunlight coming from the windows showing the beautiful Scottish scenery outside. 

"Didn't do anything you'd regret this summer, did you, Scamander?" Again, his tone was light and personal, but it was somehow too light and too personal. The boys behind Tom sniggered and smiled to varying degrees but Tom paid them no attention, his gaze was fixed on Jacoby and Jacoby only. Jacoby shook his head like a jam jar lid that had finally come loose. The boy smiled and for a moment I believed it to be a genuine smile, but then I saw those fathomless black eyes and decided against that possibility. "Excellent. Well, come along. Sluggy's waiting for us in the Slugclub cabin." The boy chirped. It was making my head hurt. 

"You go on ahead, I'll catch up with you." Jacoby chirped back, astounding me. He even managed a dazzling smile. Grinning, Tom scuttled off with his little gang leaving me alone with my big brother. He was staring at the ground, his hands balled into two tight fists and his head was turned away from me, only showing me the pale underside of his hair. He'd gotten so pale over this summer. Whether it was to do with the fact that he never left the confines of his room or for some other reason, I doubt I'll ever know, but in that moment, I have never seen someone so dejected and down trodden. He looked like a house elf. It was a few long minutes before he spoke, a silence filled only with the hum of conversation from the nearby cabins and the odd drilling sound of the train itself, moving ever further from my parents and gradually closer to Hogwarts.

"You must never tell anyone what happened here today, Daphne." His voice was limp and lifeless like a damp piece of lettuce.

"Jacoby they're bullying you," I began but was shortly interrupted by my quicker witted brother.

"They're my friends, Daph." He said, smiling slightly and gently pushing a strand of wild ginger hair behind my ear. He was so broken, why couldn't he see what his so called friends were doing to him? I opened my mouth to ask him, but he had already walked off, his school bag swinging almost in protest as he left. 

My first year went by and I didn't see a lot from my two older siblings, seeing as we were all sorted into different houses (I was sorted into Hufflepuff, much to the delight of my parents) and we all went our separate ways. Overall, I enjoyed my first year of Hogwarts, I even made a few close friends, Sophie Patal and Gladys Knickerbocker. Sophie was a bright girl who shared the same dorm as me. She was cheery and had long hair that she always wore in spiralling, dark braids held tightly to her head with an abundance of pins and too much hairspray. Gladys was Scottish had a thick accent which took a while for me to get used to, coming from a middle class, half Irish family. She had extremely tangled brown hair and very pale, almost white eyes which gave her the impression of looking slightly mad. I liked that. Together, they were the best part of Hogwarts.

The worst part were the stares. They haunted me wherever I went, I just couldn't seem to shake them. I felt like an amusement in a cheap playground at first but as the year continued with no sign of the stares letting up I just got on with my school life. The whispers were harder to ignore but even the hushed discussions in the corners of rooms and the furtive glances in my direction became old news. I guess I was a sort of celebrity, due to my Father's book, but I was by no means the most popular person there.

That crown belonged to Tom Riddle. Everyone adored him, even the teachers, and I can't think of one student who had anything negative to say about him. Apart from Lena and I. I had confided in her that I did not trust the mysterious half-blood boy or his alarmingly large group of cronies and she agreed. Despite only being a second year Tom possessed a level of charisma that effected even some fifth years. I personally couldn't see how anyone could spend more than ten minutes with him and his disturbing eyes, but Lena and I seemed to be the only ones who mistrusted the beautiful Riddle. Slughorn, the potion's master, virtually worshipped the boy because of his beauty and annoyingly undeniable talent at pretty much everything. Slughorn had even started up a club for Tom and other brilliantly able or famous teenagers to meet and chortle over their strawberry sorbets together. Jacoby was one of these chortling numpties so I can't be too harsh. I had been invited to one of these meetings but the very idea made my skin crawl and I simply couldn't understand how Jacoby attended week after week to these almost cultish gatherings. Foolishly perhaps, I had hoped that he'd only attended out of kindness to the lonely old man, Slughorn was head of Jacoby's house after all, but no, he actually seemed to enjoy the SlugClub and showed no signs of repenting and refusing to go like Lena and I had down many months prior. 

I tried to not let it annoy me, it wasn't like I had done the world a great justice by refusing the harmless old man's request, I doubt the potions master had even really wanted me there in the first place, I assume that he only reason he asked was out of respect to the Scamander name, it was Lena he really wanted to collect. Lots of people were captivated by Lena either because of her beauty or the circumstances of her conception, and sadly it was often the latter. We wizards love a good scandal and what is more scandalous than an illegitimate pregnancy, particularly when a celebrity like my father was more than a little involved. Everybody wanted to know the details and it wasn't uncommon for someone to befriend my slightly naïve sister just to dig information out of her, information that Lena did not possess. I often wondered why Lena turned down Dad's offers of an explanation, if I were her I'd be out there searching for answers like a bloodhound, but Lena seemed content not knowing so I never asked. 

As summer reared its sweltering, ferocious head once more, I began to fear returning home to the silent meals, hoping that Jacoby would deem to come downstairs and sit with us. He made me so angry sometimes, the way he treated us, his family, like nuisances or pests to be avoided at all costs. And I hated the way my parents just hovered around him, tiptoeing around the giant ass crater that he had made, why didn't they say something, do something, to stop him from being an arrogant tosser? When the last day of term arrived, I sat in a carriage with Sophie and Gladys. They were talking about something, but I wasn't really paying attention to them, I was too busy being half worried half angry at my older brother. What if it was different? What if this year had actually changed him? I clung to those meagre thoughts as if they were a life supporter, truth be told without them, I would have probably jumped off the train and ran all the way back to Hogwarts. 

I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. It was such a foolish thing to do because, of course, I was right about nothing changing and Jacoby still being the grumpy git he'd been last year. I have the rather annoying talent of only ever being right when it's wrong to be so and apparently this was one of these moments. Almost as soon as we arrived home Jacoby vanished up into his bedroom and didn't come down till the day before we left for school. He did this every year. Every year but one. He's fifteen now and this summer was the worst. This summer he decided to come downstairs.

It didn't start off being a bad thing, in fact we were delighted he wanted to spend some time with us (I'm pretty sure Mam cried) and for a few weeks at least we were happy, we were normal. Of course, he was still grumpy but it was as if he were trying to work things out and that's all we wanted, but then the owls arrived. We weren't three weeks out of school and Jacoby would receive letters daily that said things he wouldn't share and from people he wouldn't say. But I knew and Lena did too. Every time one of those cursed tawny owls fluttered gracefully through our open window, Jacoby's face would twist into a look of disgust so powerful it could bore through walls. It was the same face he made whenever Tom picked on a younger kid, the same face he made when Slughorn praised Tom as if he were the second coming and not the anti-Christ. And every time those letters arrived Jacoby would shrink further and further away from us until there was nothing of him left. 

It's nearly one now. I've been writing this for some time and the threstral's are becoming restless and are gently nudging me with their pale, bony heads. I love thestrals. They're like me, ignored and forgotten until tragedy strikes and suddenly they're all you can see. I'm the only one of my sibling's that are able to see them which unnerves them a little, I think because they don't know why I can see them. Dad knows though, and Mam in fact it was Mam's idea for me to meet the thestrals after Mariella died and I've loved them ever since. 

I should probably go now, my dear sneak, my Mam's yelling for me and I'll have hell to pay if I don't go soon. Till the next time we meet,

Daphne Ariella Erinna Scamander

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first piece, please leave a kudos if you enjoyed and give me your feedback!


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